Well I do use a perfume.....KAI ! I love it ... but that's not what I am talking about here. Here I am talking about our pioneering Key Agility Indictors! How did this come about?

Well, I was touring Europe on our SOA Executive Summit tour and I had multiple customers come to me asking me about how to measure the agility of SOA. So we started thinking about it and talking to industry leaders and decided to really look at how to measure this concept. Since the concept of KAIs was born. But don't toss out those KPIs...(key performance indicators) because I believe that a great business uses both KPIs and KAIs. It the combo that is the killer combo! Bola on my team has been working on a great team to focus here.....

So I know you guys are looking for the newness here. What is "new" is that we have assimilated/selected a combination of open standard metrics and business drivers which I believe that together provide mechanism for evaluating agility. In addition, we have identified leading practices associated with those KAIs and incorporated them into process flows which allow us to quickly work with our clients in achieving their strategic objectives. What is also "new" is that we have collected this KAI data from thousands of organizations globally and provided them to our practitioners in a single view where they can create their own industry peer group comparisons. This view is available through an internal tool called the IBM Benchmark Wizard. Using the IBM Benchmark Wizard, practitioners have real time access to over 1,200 cross industry performance metrics; 1,100 qualitative business drivers; 700 leading practices statements, 1,600 case studies and data from over 16,000 companies from over 70 countries!! So now we can work with customers to benchmark their agility!

It is not our intent to create new proprietary metrics to measure agility. To do so would be a departure from our commitment to open standards for performance measurement. We are committed to open standards in benchmarking. Our open standards approach drives data quality by ensuring that all organizations measuring performance are doing so using one common set of process and activity definitions. We invest in the Open Standards Benchmarking CollaborativeSM and the supporting Process Classificaiton Framework facilitied by APQC, a not for profit research organization and an IBM partner for benchmarking. The open standard approach and framework for measuring performance provides objectivity, comparability and quality data by which organizations can compare.

Please read this first white paper on the Business Metrics of KPIs and KAIs...and tell me what you think!

OK Gang! One of our big announcements this 2H SOA Launch is Process Integrity. End to end process integration is required to hold your services, information and users together. This integration must be robust and scalable – otherwise it will restrict you from growing your SOA and building on your initial successes. As you move from basic to advanced SOA, you should be able to use the same products and architectures in an expanded and more advanced way.

So the architecture must start with the ability to provide Process Integrity, even if you don’t use all the capabilities in every project. Robust capabilities must be part of the middleware layer. For example, let’s look at the Enterprise Service Bus. There are several types of ESBs, depending on what they are being used for. An in fact, it’s very possible that you might have different ESBs running in different domains. But whatever ESBs you are running, they must be able to grow with you and provide scalable connectivity as your SOA becomes more advanced. This also means that you might federate multiple ESBs, so that various ESBs are integrated into a larger architecture.

Security and quality of service are key to a successful SOA environment. Even if you don’t need the full set of capabilities in your first couple of projects, you need to ensure that your SOA environment is capable of growing with you. As SOA matures, it will very likely be the basis of a large percentage of IT projects in the future. It’s hard to think of large IT projects that don’t focus on security, scalability, availability and performance. Don’t think of your initial project as something that will be thrown away in the future. Think of them as laying the groundwork for your long-term architecture.

Well, this weekend we had a kids day out and I brought "Smarties" to the gig. Of course, the children all love them (I do too -- especially the "extreme sour" and "tropical" flavors.) My daugther Cassie asked me a great question. She said "Mommy if I eat lots of these, I will get extra smart, right?" of course hoping that by saying that, she would get to eat the whole bag!

I too wish there was a smart pill. Well, of course for me a Smart SOA pill!

And this is what we tried to do with our Oct 3 2007 announcement. Leverage the "Smarts" of our over 5700 customers using our SOA offerings to help others customers with a smarter approach to SOA. This Smarter SOA approach has a couple of central pillars of Smart SOA are:* There is a continuum of styles from basic to advanced for pursuing SOA projects. * All styles require simplicity and robustness regardless of how simple or advanced they are * Recognition that today’s choices have consequences for tomorrow. As business needs evolve, the systems deployed for today’s needs will have to stand up to tomorrow’s demands.

The SOA Continuum has 4 styles in it: 1. Foundational for the small, department based approach, 2. Extend End to End for those customers who are ready to take their integration further internally and externally, 3. Transform - for those customers transforming their businesses at an enterprise level and 4. Adapt dynamically - allowing the predictive nature of IT to meet business needs.

It is a low risk, practical, hands-on way to get started with SOA! And get this. It is a free place for developers and architects to go for full version software trials or ‘Try online’ hosted environments. In addition to the free code, it has Quick start guide; Solution cookbooks; Demos; Decision guides; Architectural guidance; Technical whitepapers; Sample SOA applicationNote: the following products are made available for trial in the Sandbox: – Tools– Rational Software Architect – WebSphere Integration Developer – Rational Tester for SOA Quality– Runtimes (Note: the runtimes are included via the embedded unit test environment)– WebSphere Application Server – WebSphere ESB – WebSphere Process Server – WebSphere Portal – WebSphere Adapters

There are more foundational announcements....including the extension of Web 2.0 with SOA...I'll blog on that tomorrow!!!

For the more advanced function, we are talking about Process Integrity! After completing their initial SOA projects, companies will almost inevitably start quickly thinking about how to incorporate the principles of SOA into their enterprise architectures. Companies will need to leverage their IT to provide strategic advantage and to support business model innovation. In order to do this, IT will need to take advantage of reusable business services that can be quickly used to build new solutions to support rapidly changing business needs.

What is it? Process Integrity is the degree to which loosely coupled systems based on SOA can deliver the mission-critical performance of traditional, tightly coupled systems. We have leveraged its years of experience building robust computing systems to deliver an SOA portfolio that can provide unmatched reliability, scalability and security across a wide range of services. This seamless synchronization across the different services, human tasks, information sources and users is key to providing support for critical business processes.

> Play with the SOA Sandbox Process integrity covers several specific aspects of the SOA environment focused on the integrity of transactions, interactions and information. Process integrity also focuses on the key aspects of security and quality of service.Transaction integrity is the ability for both long and short-running transaction to execute consistently and recover when necessary. Interaction integrity is the ability to provide users with access to the information and content they need - when and where they need it. WebSphere Portal is key to providing this interaction integrity.Information integrity focuses on the reliability, completeness and manageability of the information that flows through the SOA environment. Information integrity is supported by the enhanced IBM Information Server.Security enhancements that support process integrity have been made to Tivoli Federated Identity Manager and the WebSphere DataPower Security Gateway.

These are 2 highlights of our announcements and there will be many many more to come!

Let me know your thoughts and how you like our announcements!

I'll post the highlighted press clips and more announcements! I am headed to Canada now for a Retail Commerce Summit!! See ya soon! Sandy

This past week on Thursday and Friday you probably saw the press hit the stands!

Let me give you guys a little more information!

1) We announced the connection of a Globally Integrated Enterprise (GIE) with SOA! These common capabilities are what we observe as the 6 Essential Global Competencies, the first capability is to Manage Value Through a specialized ecosystem. What we mean by a specialized ecosystem is Continually assess where, when and by whom value is created across the extended enterprise – what’s core and strategic and what can be leveraged through a partner to drive down costs or achieve global distribution. The second is to Effectively manage Risk and Control by taking innovative approaches to risk management. Examining processes in how work is done and where it flows best, the third is to Enable Modular Business Processes by enabling modular business operations. The fourth is to Foster Global Collaboration by optimizing and harnessing ideas from within the enterprise and sourced from the extended enterprise. Employing both collaborative and traditional innovation approaches are a critical competency. The fifth area is to Leverage Global Assets by using global resources most economically and effectively and lastly, to Serve Distinct Markets by seeking new customers and potential partners.

IBM’s new GIE Assessment capabilities – a detailed assessment in becoming a GIE uses 5 levels of detailed assessment criteria across 24 dimensions for deep understanding of areas to focus on as you begin your Path along the Smart SOA continuum.

We announced: The GIE Assessment

What is it? The Globally Integrated Enterprise Assessments is an assessment to identify and benchmark business model capabilities against world-class standards. Learn more about it!

2) Globally Integrated Enterprises require agility - and that agility is the value proposition of SOA!

What is Agility? Agility is the ability to quickly and effectively respond to changes, opportunities and threats.

What did we announce? Well, we pioneered the Key Agility Indicators (KAIs)...KAIs are made available through a GBS engagement. This whole concept of key agility indicators is powerful! I'll do another blog just on those!

3) IBM is helping GIEs to optimize and innovate their processes. This leads up to some exciting BPM announcements!!

What did we announce?a) Business Process Management (BPM) Methodology - enhanced with combined software capabilities and business expertise to accelerate process innovation and optimizationb) Tools to work the BPM methodology:Model: WebSphere Business Modeler with advanced usabilityDeploy: IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric and its associated pre-built, customizable IBM Industry Content PacksAdditional business services New industry content packs in banking, healthcare, insurance, and telecommunicationsMeasure: WebSphere Business Monitor - IBM WebSphere Business Monitor for users to create new KPIs and manage alerts without involving IT.New dashboards including a Business of IT Dashboard to keep tabs on overall IT metrics at a glance.

This set of announcements looks at Power to the Business user!!!! to really exploit SOA!